I hear you scream but what about automation… well yes we have to get there, we’re having to build the setup first to learn the basics in order to take that and expand it out, you gotta bootstrap from one place to the other.

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I’m writing this blog not to TEACH someone how to do something , but to show people how “I” learned how to do something, how I’m teaching myself and in the process may help someone else learn the tech. and hopefully foster less rote thinking and more dynamic solutions in people, to see that this isn’t difficult it’s a building block of stuff and we can think at all the levels if we just step back a bit and look at the whole we see it’s all lego bricks and plumbing,

layers and layers on top of each other, and how we follow that flow is by monitoring at each layer, onions baby onions.

So that’s what i’m attempting to do with the tech side of this blog I’ve got a bunch of things to learn to get me back into the game, and as such I’m going to document my learning from what I see on the a job spec and from a general list by philip reynolds and bulk it out , it’s draft one of a draft site, and there’s opsschool but I don’t much like it’s structure so I’m gonna write my own. I want there to be levels of stuff, the base stuff the core knowledge, the stuff you have to know, then there’s the stuff that goes on top of that then how do you scale it and shit like that, all stuff i’ve done before but I’m going back to basics and trying to build a mental path from I’m a beginner to I’m a person that does DevOps.

so basically i’m writing this blog to remember shit because I’ve got the worst memory ever, and I need somewhere to have public access to my thought patterns and thoughts and be able to search for that shit in a way I can find something I need and solutions I need.

a public private mental shit.

that’s why i’m doing this

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For a long long time as I mentioned in my first post I was struggling with my job. I read articles on how to quit your job, read articles on what to do after, read articles on how to mourn your job, and your work family, I’d already been on a journey of letting go from several break ups and a whole year of mental stress that others don’t seem on the outside, externally I’m an exceptionally calm person.

I struggled with the fear of quitting, I struggled with wondering if I was doing the right thing or if I just needed a short break, and the more I thought about it and read, the more I realised things at work were only holding me over, they were not going to get better no matter how much of a break I took.

so I started to get depressed and devalue my worth and feel shitty about it all.

I stopped learning I stopped feeling excited, I stopped giving a fuck , which lead me to the article by mark manson, the sublte art of not giving a fuck.

I kept reading I kept avoiding I kept talking about quitting and I just couldn’t do it.

I decided to take a trip to Texas, and see an old friend, who I hold in high regard.

I was out of my usual mindset for a while in an environment that ment I could BE someone else for a bit , and do something else for a bit with people I trusted.

it helped solidify my through process, helped solidify what I wanted to do and reading the comments, other people had the same feeling in other industries, it’s so common and so frustrating that so many of the work force feel like this, and yet we’re not exactly in an economy to push for more and feel guitly for asking for more

i took the plunge when I got back and suddenly the world changed in my head.

I was happier, I was freer, I was scared but it was good, i was exhausted an couldn’t feel much so took a month just watching netflix and feeling burnt out but feeling FREE… free to just go to the pub, free to just chill and see what I wanted, but then it hit me… what do I do now. what do I do next.

again the power fo the internet, the mistress that had kept me warm on my coldest nights

I didn’t think much of it a the time, but decided to give it a go.. it took me 4 attempts before i started to feel it was doing any good, it was teaching me to believe I could do anything I wanted to now, that each little step foward was going to get me to my goal, again mark manson turned up with his do something princple… do ANYTHING.. just doing anything would push you forward.

So now i sit here… 3 months in thinking… what next…

do I still want to be a sysadmin

do I still want to be in tech

do I want to do something creative.

how well do my skills translate

who am I

what I am

where am I going

and the reality is this..

it doesn’t fucking matter… do you know why.. for all the bullshit in the world.. you WILL find a job. but you have to be grateful for what you have… finding any job is still A job… be afraid to fail at a few things.

people will say, oh yeah it’s easy when you have money behind you, sure it is, but if you need a break… take a break, knowing you will find a job. don’t sit there complaining nothing is changing, you’re the architect of your own life.

I’m the architect of my own life. I decided to write this blog… I decided to level up.. I decided to start my own company, I don’t know how to do most of those things… but fuck it.. i’ll give it a go. there’s plenty of arseholes in the world that want to critise but you know what, if that’s all they can do, they are small and weak and pathetic.

I decided to take that list I wrote to see what of those I could invest , not spend money on.. INVEST in … ( again thanks mr manson )

i asked do I want to contract or have a permanent job

do I want to travel . what realllllly matters to me.

and I don’t know. but you know what… now I can find out. and the first step for me, find out what my values are again, find out what my boundaries are again, find out waht I will not accept from a company from a worker from a colleague from myself, from parents from life from government, becuase all of that will push me towards my purpose, not that I believe in purpose more, just being a decent human being atht wants everyone to work together for the greater good… the dvision in society fucks me off, censorship fucks me off, the justice system fucks me off, post colonolaism fucks me off, shitty people fuck me off, noise fucks me off.

I am going to write, I am going to sit in places and look at the world. I’m going to draw , I’m going to read, I’m going to level up my skills. I’m going to arse about with both my raspberry pis still in their boxes. I’m going to clear my flat out of all the junk i’m holding onto. I’m going to do self work. to be fair I’ve been doing that a while but now I have hoest time to do that and writing genuinely makes me feel better. typign has an odd comfort factor for me.

I want to do something useful, something game changing. I want to make a film. I want to make a comic I want to make music all of these I can do. I have kit aquired over time. I have skills I already have developed… so.. what do I do now… anything I damn well please… and so can you.

if you have family etc. then talk to them about it , build up some funds if you’re able, say you need this time and to allow you space to grow.. but for god sake DON’T WASTE THE OPPORTUNITY. I did that for too many times in too many was..

how you do anything is how you do everything to quote someone I can’t fricken remember.

but the key to all this after quitting is… DO NOTHING.. don’t make ANY decisions while you’re in mourning. Don’t jump from one frying pan to another. you’ll only end up back in the same place you were before. and justifying it saying… but but but I need to busy… no you don’t . you only need to be distracted. sometimes stopping… just standing still will help you see your way forward, because even if you are falling/failing, you’re moving FORWARD.

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It’s been almost 3 months since I quit my job and I am happier generally for it. I saw some recent work colleagues and they all said the same thing, that I look very chilled and that I seemed well.

Little did they know i’m struggling . Sturggling for motivate, struggling for direction and struggling for purpose. purpose is the big one. the one that made me quit my job. actually that’s a lie , it’s a small thing in a larger issue. for years i’d been saying I was going to quit my job, that I was going to do something better, go and fufill life’s dreams, yet here I am here I am having read article after article AFTER the fact of quitting about what to do next. I’d writtten a load of lists last year to give me somethine to do. i went through 2 messy breakups , nothing that we don’t all do, but this came with the added complication of all involved had a history of depression, I went through uncertainty, watching my team be decinmated, watching the moral of the company go down hill, feeling like more and more of a cog in a big engine of indecision.

I quit because I was burnt out I quit because I couldn’t do it anymore I quit because i no longer felt effective at my job or at my skills. I feel like I lost a lot in that process. there’s a studied law that says after a whiile a long term employee just becomes less and less productive. and I feel I hit that point. I’d started there with fresh hopes and big ideas. I was part of a small two admin team running out a shonky office in croydon building the infrastructure for a company that had just started. wet behind the ears for this stuff, but already a decade of solid sysadmin behind me. I’d worked for financial institutes, I’d worked for the mobile phone sector, i’d worked my first syadmin job in an ISP and a telco. i’ve been around the block a few times this last 20 years… 20 years yes that’s right and I feel like I just gave up the ghost at doing something that didn’t feel worthwhile anymore. I felt burnt out, years of doing what felt like the same thing , autopilot in an ever changing industry, I got into this because it excited me, it made me feel like I was solving problems , being useful, I stopped being useful when i felt the company I was working for had been taken over and the network and infrastructure I’d built was slowly pulled away from me. I felt lost and a little aggreived by the whole process. I felt less and less heard, i an situation that I chose not to fight back about. I’m as much responsible for this as anyone else.

through the years I saw bad pmo, wasteful progress and projects, ego stopping people stopping projects and plouging ahead ot to lose face . I saw people build their little power empires, for their own gains and not for the greater good I saw department challenge and battle department. I saw resource fighting for the few good people to complete projects . I saw old skool ideas fight new skool ideas , an attempt for wisdom vs cowboy , I saw a lack of functional R&D and I felt left out of the decision tree. I felt ignored in a company I helped to build up. Sysadmin is a bit of a dead ceiling job, there is no real job progression, you do it or you don’t outside of that you’re an architect or a manager. I was never made to manage, I can architect but I always felt they werw too far away from the action. I left because people didn’t communicate and people didn’t include others. I left because I felt I’d had enough of doing something that felt purposeless, that it didn’t matter one way or another, i’d stress over what it was I was doing, about the fear of being blamed, of being found out as a fruad one day ( imposter syndrome ) of never being good enough and feeling I had to stick my fingers into everything to at least regain some sembelence of control, and more often than not those that were around me, agreed with me, those in other groups didn’t care.

i left because I felt I was workig with peopl ein positions above me pertaining to be experts but providing no imperical evidence. I left because management didn’t care anymore about anyone not in their direct line of site . I left because we because a satelittle from being a entre of ecellence I left because I was bored and burnt out and depressed and frustrated and fucked off. all of these I’d fetl a lot time ago, but staying in the familiar discomfort made it worst and I was happy complaining it made me feel important. it made me feel like i was making a difference.

I left because so many stuck their head in the sand about how to do things properfly in favour of a timeline…. FUCK the timeline.

I left because there was no way for me to justify being part of and associated with batshit insane decisions to do things that weren’t thought through and that the people on the ground weren’t being listened to anymore when those upthere in their ivory towers went along going year year year we know what we’re doing here.

I left because EAs and SAs were just spinning wheels and it felt top heavy and bullshit. i left because more often than not there was no overall big picture thinking or people’s agendas got in the way. I left because blame was being pushed about not given back and making people responsible. I left because it felt like it was going back 10 years to before I started. I left because it was no longer ‘home’ . i’d made an identity of it for my self for so long that I forgot who I was without it. I left because I needed to reconnect with myself again, I left because I was no longer wanting to do the same old thing for the same old money and fake the real cost of something because someone wanted to balance a budget. I left becaues I fell out of love with sysadmin and linux and beinga geek and being a problem solver. I was fed up of solving other people’s bullshit… but that’s what we’re paid for… solving other people’s bullshit of ridiculous requirements with little understanding or want to understand what was going on.

I left because people were bullying and I lost faith and belief in the company I was working for. I no longer felt invested or wanted to invest, in myself or them. I felt I’d lost my support network and my friends. I felt I’d lost my family and it was dysfunctional, I felt that I didn’t get why we were doing any of it anymore. I was not challanged. all this could have happened before through. I’ve had a long history of not feeling happy, which is a whole other set of blog posts, but youspend 8 hours a day at a job, surely you dhould do what you love and not just settle for ajob . I felt I settled, so now here I am 3 months later, writing… having read, having chilled, having mourned my old job. having felt my way through other issues. having had xmas and spending it with my brother from australia, having felt I’ve wasted it while not seeing enough people. yet I’m exhausted. empty tank done. I feel a shell of who I was . I feel there isn’t a me that I know… and that’s exciting at the same time. I can fill this up with whatever I want…I should. I’ve ahd people tell me not to be out the job market too long. will I be ok , will I find another job, will there be x/y/z yet the truth is… why would I go back to doing what made me unhappy in the way I felt unhappy… I want my enthusiasm back again about tech, about computers, about geeking out and solving problems… because it’s fun. not because I’m on a deadline… necessity takes the fun out of a lot of things. not everything but a lot.. so I feel this is my time to as mark manson says… draw , fire, aim, because I just need to do something… anything to regain a sense of inner connection and happiness and not try to be happy just move forward and happiness will be a place I inhabit from a place of experience and understanding.

I lef that place because it was no longer serving me and I was no longer serving it, I was not being a sysadmin and that’s what I do not what I am I was lost wihtout that identity so I left to find a new one. to fidn me and to find what it is I wanted to do vs what I was. those are two separate things. we spend so much time building identities outo f what we do that we forget who we are. and when it’s gone it no longer feels like a ME… I had to started investing in the coporatinon of ME and build myself up again.. and the only way to do that ws to go cold turnkey .. I feel better for it I feel happier for it, yet I still feel lost and sad and depressed, because i’m not doing anything… it’s so easy to sit on your arse once it’s started it so easy to do NOTHING when there are no demands on you. i’ve on mortgage, no major debt, a pot of funds to see me through a while with some careful budgetting and a butt load of netflix to watch and blacnket to hide under. it’s too esy to be afraid fo the world having come from almost a decade of safety in one company whre I knoew what I was doing . I had to leave to regain the fear but I need healthy fear not fear of the unkonow… so I thought about starting my own buidness my own blog my own this and that and stopped out of fear.. i thought about travelling and dcould have done it when I quit and I should have , I feel I lost momentum… but I can still do it… stiill do SOMETHINg because I’m trying to plan the rest of my life and that shits happening while I’m planning and I’ll lose an opportunity…

I quit… beacause life is bigger than my job, that I am not my job that there is a world of immense experience and pleasure out there .

I quit because they weren’t investing in their staff, and expecting self learning and then results on ridiculous timescales that put your hair grey. We were becoming obselete and not having the ability to move into the cloud with the training we needed.

I quit because buying a device and sticking your head in the sand was their modus operandi rather than on going growth and focus. ( post )

I quit to be me. Now where the fuck am I… and who am I… dr who… the inemitble traveller who is seeking something.. running… so … time for to run… run you clever boy run…